Scald

Denise Duhamelis a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami. Her previous books include Second Story, Scald, Blowout, Ka-Ching!, Two and Two, and Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems.She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

In a spill of language and emotion often contained in the traditional form of the villanelle and pantoum, National Book Critics Circle finalist Duhamel ('Blowout') explores women's place in the world as part of nature, history, and culture and forever at sword's edge with men. The first poem in the book's opening section, dedicated to Shulamith Firestone, takes a steely-eyed look at feminism as legacy and inevitability (' 'having it both ways,'/ a phrase I hate/ as men always have it both ways.') Later, in a poem on evolution, the line 'A woman's real ancestors, not divine but animal' sums up the spirit throughout as we see the animal in the 'stellar explosion' of desire, the frank discussion of fornicating (or not), and one fabulous, juicy poem titled 'Porn Poem (With Andrea ÆDworkin.). Duhamel's deceptively informational, almost deadpan voice might at first puzzle but soon becomes incantatory, even obsessive. Engaging for a wide range of readers.